DEADLY GAME
by L. C. Brotherton
Summary: An unexpected call for help from an old friend pits Dean and Sam in a race against time to prevent catastrophe.
1. Chapter 1

TITLE: Deadly Game

AUTHOR: L. C. Brotherton

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringements intended. I just like to bring some of these characters out to visit my playground and promise to put them back when we've finished our game.

RATING: PG-13 or T for sexual situations, crude language, and violence.

SPOILERS & READERS' ADVICE: All of Season One is fair game. If you haven't seen the first two episodes of Season Two, elements of this story will ruin those two wonderful hours for you. Never say I didn't warn you!

REVIEWS/FEEDBACK: Yes, please!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I originally began this tale several years back, then my mother fell ill and I packed my muse away to become her caregiver. Eventually, she passed away and I was hollow for the longest time. My muse started whispering to me and I began to write again. I decided to reshape this story and give it the proper finish it deserved.

**. . . S U P E R N A T U R A L. . .**

Missouri Mosely slowly sat upright in her bed. Her clock read 12:01 AM as she fumbled in the dark toward the lamp on her nightstand. There was a vague and uninvited presence within the room, but she felt no malice or darkness, even when she felt that it was almost within arm's reach of her bed.

"I know you're here," Missouri said quietly, calm authority steadying her voice. "Show yourself."

There was the briefest hesitation and a faint breeze wafted through the room. Missouri was immediately shocked at the apparition that coalesced before her. Had she not seen the child once every several months for the last twenty-some odd years, Missouri was certain she wouldn't have been able to identify the battered wraith coalescing before her. Pale and disheveled, Arianna Lambert looked at her with sad and bewildered eyes. She held up her hands and Missouri could see that they were covered with blood.

"Baby girl!" Missouri hissed, instinctively reaching toward the girl. Her hands passed through the semi-transparent form before her.

"Help me," the girl whispered before looking away toward something Missouri couldn't see, and then her form began to dissipate as she began to turn away.

"Ari, baby, wait!" Missouri begged, despair crossing her dark-cocoa features. "I don't understand!" she wailed into the empty room. "You're lost, but I know who can find you," she muttered with determination.

With trembling hands, she grabbed for her address book on the bedside table, finger quickly trailing down the list. When her finger landed on the entry for "Winchester," the phone began to ring and even without caller ID, she didn't need to be a powerfully gifted psychic to know whom the caller was.

**. . . S U P E R N A T U R A L. . .**

Sam Winchester flopped onto the bed, not caring about the caked mud falling off his clothes onto the flowered bedspread. He was exhausted and filthy, but Dutch Simmons had been laid to rest properly and this gig was finally over.

"Hey, you need the bathroom?" Dean asked, kicking off his boots. "I'm gonna get a shower."

"I'm good—just don't use all the hot water," Sam yawned, rubbing his hands over his face.

Heading for the bathroom, his brother was prepared to deliver a witty remark in return when he stood stock-still in the center of the room. "Holy hell!" Dean hissed in amazement. "Sam, you seeing this?"

Sam nodded as a familiar figure coalesced in front of Dean, like smoke blown into a bottle. She looked like the loser in a marathon barroom brawl, bruised and battered, as her gaze locked with Dean's. He paled when she raised blood-covered hands. Tears trickled down her face, mingling with dirt and blood, and she reached out a hand toward him.

"Hurts," she whispered and pity crossed his face as he quickly reached for her outstretched hand, finding only air instead of warm skin. "Dean, help me," she pleaded softly. Her echoed pain and fear.

"Ari, where are you? What happened?" Dean demanded.

Abruptly, she looked away and began to fade. Glancing back, she smiled sadly. "Help me…."

Dean blinked and she was gone.

"Ari, wait!" Dean howled, whirling to face Sam who stared back at him in shock.

There was only a shocked moment of indecision before Dean started reacting. "Dammit, Sam, get moving!" he yelled, racing to his bed to start shoving everything back into his duffel bag. "Call Missouri and see what the hell that's supposed to mean?"

Sam reached slowly for his cell phone, reluctant to share his impending thought with his brother, preparing for the backlash the statement would create. "Dean, it was a Sending. She might have crossed over and – "

"She's not dead, Sam, she's not dead!" Dean snapped, shouldering his bag as he snatched the room keys off the table.

"And you know this because-?"

"Because she would have told us if she was dead, moron!"

"Yeah, she astral projects all the time to deliver messages instead of picking up a phone," Sam muttered sarcastically, keying in Missouri's phone number.

"Shut up with that, just shut up!" Dean ordered. "She's not dead!" he shouted again for good measure, just as Sam's call connected. "Just call Missouri already!"

Sam had just then keyed in Missouri's phone number and was sure that the woman had just overheard that last bit, and hated how frantic his own voice sounded when he blurted out, "Missouri!"

"It'll be okay," she said, her voice infusing the smallest amount of calm over the miles between them.

"No," Sam protested quickly. "It's bad, Missouri, really bad. Ari's in trouble—she might be dead. She was here—it was a Sending, and she asked Dean to help her!"

"Baby, calm down," Missouri ordered. "I saw her, too. She's hurt bad, but she's not dead." In the background, she could hear commotion and noise. "Breathe in and out, real slow. Tell me what's going on—what happened—and what that racket is."

"Uh, we're getting ready to hit the road in a minute," he said, and Missouri knew she'd never heard packing done so noisily.

She heard Dean yelling at his brother, catching "double-time it, Sammy" and "out of here in five" before the door slammed.

Sam heaved a sigh. "Dean's freaking out—she looked awful."

"Tell me what you saw," she repeated.

"We saw Arianna Lambert," Sam rasped. "She looked pretty rough and was dripping blood. Dean was headed for the bathroom and there she was, right in front of him. She said 'help me' a couple of times and then she was gone."

"Okay, I'm going to call her daddy and see if he knows what in the world is going on. Where are you boys headed?"

"I don't know yet exactly," Sam admitted. Abruptly, the door swung open and Dean stood there expectantly staring at him. "Missouri doesn't know what's up, but she saw Ari, too. She's gonna call Jack."

"Well, good, and that's where we're going," Dean announced.

Sam nodded and relayed that to Missouri who promised to call back as soon as she'd spoken with Ari's father. Two minutes later, the black Chevy's tires squalled as it roared off the parking lot toward the interstate.

**. . . S U P E R N A T U R A L. . .**

Sam didn't really want to know how fast Dean was driving, although his eyes kept drifting as he tried to catch a glance at the speedometer. When he realized that the needle on the speedometer had climbed past 85 miles per hour and was still moving toward the other side of the gauge, he quit trying to catch a glance, and instead kept his eyes on the side-view mirror. He was expecting red lights from a random Missouri Highway Patrolman at any given minute.

They'd crossed the northern Missouri state line an hour back, but it was only after they'd actually hit Interstate 70 and Sam saw the sign announcing "St. Louis, 30 miles," that he openly cringed.

It was hard to believe it had been more than a year ago when they'd tackled the shape shifter who'd mimicked Dean's form prior to committing a gruesome murder in the midwestern city. Dean had permanently ended the creature, but when it died, it died as a carbon copy of the older Winchester brother. For a short while, Dean enjoyed the dubious distinction of being legally dead and buried in a nondescript cemetery in St. Louis County.

Dean's status among the dead was relatively short-lived, if not eventful. Thanks to a gig in Maryland and a slip-up that included their arrest, and subsequent escape from the local authorities, Dean Winchester was officially alive and well again in the corporeal world-and entered in the FBI database as a dangerous fugitive.

Dean's attempt to break the land speed record on I-70 was bound to be noticed, sooner or later. Sam wondered idly what it would be like to be involved in a high-speed pursuit down the interstate because he knew there was no power on Earth that would be able to make Dean stop driving. That could only end badly, and Sam poked Dean in the leg, pointing emphatically to the speedometer as he raised his eyebrows at his brother.

Dean's potential reply was cut short by Sam's cell chirping for attention. "It's Missouri," Sam announced as he flipped the phone open, putting the call on speaker mode.

"How far away are you?" she asked, her voice strained and hollow-sounding as it emanated from Sam's phone.

Dean's knuckles were white as his fingers dug into and around the steering wheel. "Two hours, if I book it," he commented tersely, eyes boring straight ahead as if the determination in his glare could erase the miles between them and their destination.

"Are you saying we aren't booking it now?" Sam asked in disbelief.

"Dean Winchester, you get your lead foot off that gas, and that's an order!" she snapped. "You'll do that girl no good if you kill yourself and your brother on the way to help her."

Reluctantly and with a pained expression on his face, Dean eased up on the gas and Sam was happy to see the needle dropping away from the 100 on the speedometer.

"Now, that's better," Missouri said, when the car was speeding along in the mid-eighties. "I talked to Jack and he's a nervous wreck. Three days ago, Ari went to baby sit for one of the neighbors down the road. When the parents came home, the kids were alone and they said she'd left several hours earlier. Her truck was found, off the road, down a ravine. . ."


	2. Chapter 2

TITLE: Deadly Game: Chapter 2

AUTHOR: L. C. Brotherton

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringements intended. I just like to bring some of these characters out to visit my playground and promise to put them back when we've finished our game.

RATING: PG-13 or T for sexual situations, crude language, and violence.

SPOILERS: Anything between Season One and Season Two's episode "The Usual Suspects" is fair game.

REVIEWS/FEEDBACK: Yes, please!

**. . . S U P E R N A T U R A L. . .**

Blue Earth, Montana

June, 1984

10:30 PM

Six-year-old Dean Winchester froze in the doorway, stunned beyond belief at what he saw in Pastor Jim Murphy's kitchen.

For days, he'd looked forward to being in Jim's home, a place that consistently meant safety and familiarity over the last year. And now, after they'd driven for hours in the rain just to get here, the unthinkable had happened: Pastor Jim wasn't alone in his kitchen, and it was far worse than Dean ever could have imagined.

A little girl with curling, brown pigtails sat at the kitchen table with Pastor Jim, crayons and coloring books scattered about. She had a plateful of animal crackers in front of her to go with the hot cocoa she was drinking. For a panicked moment, Dean felt his heart stutter when he thought that she was drinking out of his very favorite GI Joe mug, the one with Duke on it. It took a second for his thudding heart to slow down as he realized that the mug had Duke's friend, Scarlet, on it-so it wasn't his mug, after all.

Stunned, and slowing trying to recover from his shock over the intruder's presence, he dropped his denim backpack on the floor, and his father nearly stumbled over him at the threshold.

"Dean, get a move on, boy—you're not a doorstop!" John growled in weary annoyance, shifting the weight of his sleeping two-year-old son as he carried him close to his shoulder, using his knee to nudge his oldest son into the room.

Seated at the kitchen table, Pastor Jim stopped coloring and smiled in welcome at his guests. "It's good to see you," the cleric and some-time hunter warmly offered in greeting. "I was beginning to worry that something might have happened. You're a couple of hours late. Caleb had to go help take care of—well, something. He'll be back when he can."

"Storm slowed us down," John offered. "Bridge is washed out at Wild Horse Creek and we had to take the back way."

While John and Pastor Jim continued to talk about unimportant things like bridges washing away in flash floods, their words were sucked off the planet and into the newly ripped chasm in the fabric of reality. Dean hastily considered what this new development might mean. It had to be a joke of some kind, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it, because it wasn't very funny.

The little girl met Dean's eyes solemnly, and she wiped off a foamy hot cocoa mustache with the back of her hand. Unexpectedly, she grinned at him, and he could see that she was missing two of her front teeth.

"What's the matter with you? " John demanded, lightly smacking Dean in the back of the head with a few fingers. "She's not gonna bite you, Sport. I'm gonna put Sam in the back bedroom," he announced, moving around the statue that used to be his oldest son.

Pastor Jim smiled and rose, the wooden chair making a hideous squeak on the hardwood floor. "I'll get some coffee ready," he said, affectionately ruffling Dean's hair as he moved past the boy.

"Dean, make yourself at home and I'll get you some hot cocoa," Pastor Jim said, pulling a pair of mugs from the cabinet, one of which was Dean's GI Joe mug. "I'd like to introduce you to Miss Arianna Lambert."

"Arianna, this is Dean Winchester, a very good friend of mine," he continued, pouring up hot cocoa in Dean's GI Joe mug. "I have a feeling that two of you are going to become very good friends, too."

Dean hoped that Pastor Jim wasn't betting on the very good friendship between him and Miss Arianna Lambert. She cocked her head and appraised Dean quietly with big green eyes, then nodded. She slid some coloring books toward him and held out a handful of crayons. "Wanna color with me?"

"Dean's quite the artist, Ari," Jim commented, putting Dean's mug on the table and pulling out a chair. "Maybe in the morning, he might show you some of the drawings he made when he last visited," he continued, gently guiding Dean toward the chair next to the little girl. Dean wasn't overly pleased with the idea that this intruding girl was still going to be around in the morning, but it would give him more time to figure out exactly how she fit into the picture.

"I like Batman," Dean said, leafing through the book on top of the pile, smiling as she slid the plate of animal crackers between them so he could have some, too.

"I like him, too, but Superman is nicer," she confided, dunking a lion-shaped cracker into her mug.

"Yeah, but Batman is smarter and he has that cool utility belt," Dean countered, picking up a purple crayon to start working on the Joker's suit.

A few minutes later when John came back downstairs, he gratefully accepted the mug of steaming coffee offered to him and smiled with satisfaction to see that the two children were chatting quietly between themselves, comparing the various strengths of Batman and Superman. Pastor Jim gestured toward the living room, and he followed.

"I think they're getting along nicely," Pastor Jim commented.

"I was afraid Dean was going to pull the stone statue impersonation again," John said; worry creased his brow in remembrance.

In the year immediately following his mother's fiery death, stone cold silence had been the way the boy dealt with the world. John had taken his traumatized son to several physicians and counselors, all of whom greatly pitied the silence the motherless boy had retreated into, and assured the worried father that when the time was right Dean would begin speaking again. Happily, one morning he'd awoken to find Dean chattering to baby Sammy as though there hadn't been a year that John Winchester prayed for even a syllable from his boy.

During this past year, whenever he'd been jerked out of his comfort zone or under great stress, Dean had shown signs of reverting to that silent state. More often than not, John himself was typically the cause of those transition points in Dean's life, and he was afraid he'd done it yet again by not forewarning his son that a creature of the female variety would be spending time at the Murphy farm.

Abruptly, John was shocked to hear Dean laughing at something the little girl had shared with him. It had been a while since his son had laughed, and he cherished the sound.

"Ari's quite the charmer; she can coax a smile and a quick conversation out of asphalt when she wants to do it," Jim chuckled. "Actually, she's much like her father in that regard. I think you'll like Caleb and I'm very pleased that you accepted his offer to share with you some of his expertise."

Absently, John studied the steam coming off his coffee. Knowledge was power. Power was necessary to win a war. In his "other life," as he often thought of it, before coming home to Mary, he'd been a Marine and knew about war. But that was a different lifetime and a different kind of war. Currently, John had little knowledge and no power; thus he had precious little hope of winning many battles-let alone a war-against the supernatural forces that had claimed the life of his wife and forever changed his life and that of his sons. So, if an experienced and successful warrior openly offered the necessary training that John needed to turn the tables and learn how to win this kind of war, he'd gladly accept and dedicate himself toward the collection of skills that would turn him into the kind of hunter he needed to be.


End file.
